Meet the Aussie Bieber, and his YouTube stage mother

His popularity grew quickly and he began uploading more videos, as adoring teenage girls and creepy middle-aged men from around the world requested that he perform their favourite pop songs.

A combination of the talent demonstrated in the videos and their view counts, which were now in the tens of millions, caught the attention of U.S. superstar Usher, who signed Justin to his record label.

These days the traditional paths to global fame as a musician, or indeed as a performer of any kind, are giving way to the internet and more specifically, to social media such as Youtube, Facebook and Twitter.

Enter a new generation of tween wannabes who see singing to their webcams as the new rock eisteddfod. Where there is a kid seeking fame, there is often a parent or two helping them seek it, for one of any number of reasons. The result is an internet strewn with evidence of parents failing to temper the energy of their attention seeking children.

Take nine year old internet star Timmy. After watching the popular Youtube video of him performing a cover of Lady Gaga’s hit Bad Romance, I can only assume that this online atrocity exists because Timmy regularly dances around the house in his poorly fitting pyjamas, singing bad covers of pop songs.

His parents must have been under the misconception that there is some sort of positive entertainment value attached to this nasty little habit of his and as a result, encouraged him to commit this unpleasant spectacle to Youtube.

The video has almost two million views. I don’t have to take a poll to know that opinion is unanimous that Timmy demonstrates about as much talent for live performance as James Matheson does for not constantly seeming surprised.

Initially I laughed at the video and at Timmy. Not with him, but at him. Then I began to feel sorry for the poor little guy as I realised that the millions of people who have seen the video would have their own equivalent of my cruel reaction.

Instead of persuading their naive child to limit his audience to his immediate family, the mother is holding the video camera, helping Timmy remember the words and providing performance pointers (hasn’t she heard of rehearsals?).

The dad is putting in a rather lacklustre effort as back-up dancer, by intermittently grooving across the frame in his underpants.

While Timmy is using the internet to collate experiences that he will describe to a psychiatrist in years to come, kids like twelve year-old Jordan Jansen from the Gold Coast, who have a degree of genuine talent and perhaps even some hope of mimicking Bieber’s success, are using Youtube to forge the beginning of their careers.

Jordan’s journey to internet fame began when his mother posted videos of him performing in talent competitions, so that they could be watched by his interstate grandparents. The videos began to grow in popularity and soon Jordan was receiving song requests from all around the world, just like Bieber.

I contacted Jordan through his website to request an interview. I was sure that once I spoke to him, I would have a ton of ammunition which I could use to label him as precocious and annoying. I was also planning to describe his parents as selfish, pushy and money-hungry.

I was pleasantly surprised when I spoke to both Jordan and his mother and found him to be a polite, enthusiastic, focussed young chap, with a mother who seems genuinely taken aback by his growing popularity.

“It’s just out of control,” said Lee-Anne. “At first we were amazed when we got 1,000 views for one of his videos, now we get that many in an hour.”

“We were at our local shopping centre the other day and a girl saw him and started hyperventilating, she ran up to him and threw her arms around him and wouldn’t let him go,” she said.

“I had hug marks on my neck,” said Jordan. “And these women who saw it were asking mum if the girl knew me.”

Hug marks from a single adoring fan will be the least of Jordan’s problems, if Electric Feel management in the USA have anything to do with it.

They are flying Jordan and Lee-Anne to Los Angeles next week to meet his American fans and record some original songs, one of which will be released internationally as a single.

“It’s my dream come true,” said Jordan. “I love singing and it’s so exciting to think that I’m going to America to do it.”

As for what the future holds for Jordan, there is a refreshing naivety to his parents’ plans for his career.

They couldn’t tell me whether Jordan’s single would be released independently or by a record label, they had no idea about what the financial arrangement will be between themselves and Jordan’s new managers, they didn’t even know what songs he would be recording.

Jordan just wants to get over there, meet his fans and sing, and they are right behind him.

This is hardly the mindset of pushy showbiz parents, which demonstrates that Jordan’s mum and dad are in this for the right reasons, to encourage his talents, not to find a fast track to fame and money through their offspring.

While I’m sure they will quickly learn not to be so trusting of those in the entertainment business, I find their naivety refreshing in this big bad world, where videos like Timmy’s exist.

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